FT: Obama's Bounce Changes the World

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Increasingly over the past year Mr Obama was portrayed overseas as weak, indecisive and ineffective. According to Gideon Rachman of FT, that is now likely to change - at least for a while - in the wake of the passage of healthcare reform.

President Barack Obama has leapt out of his political sick-bed, ripped out his feeding tubes and is ready to dance a jig around the Oval office. The Congressional approval of healthcare reform has reinvigorated the Obama presidency in a way that has implications not just for Americans, but for the world.

By pushing through a social reform that eluded generations of presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, Mr Obama can now point to a genuinely historic achievement. He has turned around his image as a weak president who cannot get things done - just when it was getting dangerously close to becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Independent Task Force Reports

Rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in low- and middle-income countries are increasing faster than in wealthier countries. The Independent Task Force outlines a plan for collective action on this growing epidemic.